The health benefits of exercise are well known and applicable to all ages of individuals, including cardiovascular improvement, muscle strengthening, stretching, increased blood circulation, better coordination, sharper motor abilities, flexible joint mobility, bone health, general overall wellness, and the like. One problem as an individual typically moves from being a child to being an adult is that physical activity levels decline just when maintaining good health is at its most important. As an individual ages, typically their exercise levels decline, which can work against maintaining good health; thus just when an individual needs to be exercising and increasing activity, their exercise and activity levels tend to decrease. Children are normally active in going places (i.e. walking or riding a bike), playing active games in their spare time, such as football, soccer, baseball, tag, hide and seek, and the like. In addition, children are generally active in physical education classes at school and many participate in after school hour's sports leagues. Thus, as children we are normally plenty active and in the best of health due to our young age. However, as we become adults, societal norms tend to drive us into a much more sedentary lifestyle, for instance by having a car, we tend to walk or ride a bicycle very little, and as an office worker, we tend to sit at a desk for long periods of time, sit in meetings, sit on airplanes, and then go out for high fat and calorie content meals at high end restaurants; thus as a result most adults tend to gain weight as they age over time by consuming more calories coupled with a lower activity lifestyle. Therefore, we typically find ourselves in worse shape just when our bodies need to be in better shape to compensate for aging.
Although the benefits of exercise, especially for adults, are acknowledged by most everyone for weight control, agility maintenance, diabetes prevention, preventing joint strain from excessive body weight, preventing higher various internal organ workloads (especially the heart) from excessive body weight, and so on, few adults are active enough to maintain even a recommended weight. Typically only about one-fourth of the adult population is not overweight in the United States. So the question to ask is why don't the majority of adults exercise, especially when the health benefits are so widely known? One probable answer is that available time and convenience are a problem for engaging in an exercise program, as most adults have a full time job, a family, and other interests that together consume most of an adults time. Thus, a potentially helpful solution is to maximize exercise efficiency, which would in turn minimize the time necessary for an adult to set aside for an exercise program, as well as maximizing convenience to allow for more exercise to be completed in less time, making regular consistent exercise more of a real possibility for a working adult.
There are three main categories of exercise—flexibility, aerobic, and anaerobic. Each of these categories is important to the well being of the human body for different reasons. Flexibility increases the range of motion for joints and muscles. Aerobic exercise increases cardiovascular health, while anaerobic exercise increases short-term muscle strength. Anaerobic exercise typically consists of weight training. The two main forms of equipment used in weight training are free weights and exercise machines. Both types of weight training equipment use gravity as the primary means of resistance. Free weights, which consist of a bar combined with variable weight plates, can be effectively used to strengthen any part of the body. However, a person must be trained in numerous exercises using free weights to be able to effectively use them for overall body strengthening. Free weights are also somewhat dangerous if the weight plates are not attached to the bar correctly. In contrast, weight machines consist of either stacked weight, which can be used in varying combinations to create variable resistance, or weight plates which a user places on the machine in the combination they feel comfortable with. Weight machines are generally safer to use than free weights due to the greater stability of the weights, but are generally limited in the type of exercises a user can perform on a single piece of equipment utilizing a single motion.
Weight machines vary greatly, from simple machines that allow performance of a single exercise to complex machines that allow performance of multiple exercises. Generally, due to the fixed nature of the weight machine apparatus, even on machines that allow performance of multiple exercises, each individual exercise works only one specific set of muscles through single axis motion. Several machines have been designed to either try to increase the amount of resistance or increase the range of motion the muscles can move through, therefore increasing the amount of work a user must do in a single exercise, which would in turn, increase the benefits to the user.
In starting a review of the prior art in this area an early device designed to operate in a different dimension than traditional exercise machines is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,720,096 to Rogers, a variation on a traditional bench press exerciser. In a traditional bench press, a load is placed on a bar and the bar is alternately raised and lowered by a user's arms, allowing for limited motion of the arm muscles throughout the exercise. To offer resistance in a different plane, Rogers' invention adds a pivot between either ends of a u-shaped bar with a spring incorporated into the pivot to provide resistance in a lateral direction. In Roger's, a weight plate can be added to either end of the u-shaped bar to offer increased resistance, however, there is no independent exercise movement resistance between the bench press type movement and the lateral movement. In addition, with the use of a spring in Roger's for lateral exercise movement resistance is not ideal as there is no real movement resistance adjustment and due to the progressive nature of spring resistance with movement i.e. the typical spring rating of pounds force per inch of movement results in uncontrolled increases in lateral movement resistance as the levers are moved progressively inward.
Continuing, in the prior art of multi axes exercise equipment in looking at U.S. Pat. No. 5,643,152 to Simonson, a weight machine is disclosed to allow for both lateral and upward resistance. In Simonson '152, a double-hinge mechanism is incorporated to allow for dual direction resistance on a stacked weights machine using belt linkages on an eccentric cam and numerous pulleys to communicate the variable weight stack gravitational force to the upward resistance only, however, the lateral resistance is a fixed pivot resistance that has no communication with the stacked weights, being somewhat similar in function to Roger's. Simonson's '152 invention allows for the user to vary the distance between their hands while performing chest press exercises as a distinction to a conventional chest press exercise machine, and further allows for selection of the path of hand motion best suited to a user's anatomy. Simonson's '152 invention, however, does not allow for separate resistance weight training laterally and longitudinally, but rather only teaches variable resistance in the upward exercise movement only allowing a fixed weight movement resistance in the lateral direction.
Next to the same inventor, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,788,614 to Simonson, another weight machine is disclosed that offers both lateral and longitudinal resistance in only a fixed angular axis of movement, reference pivots 32 and 34 along with weight plate holders 62, all as shown in FIG. 1. Thus, Simonson '614 discloses a plate loaded weight machine partially similar to Simonson '152, the major difference being the use of weight plates for direct bar resistance instead of the stacked weights that communicate through belt linkages and pulleys that are incorporated in Simonson '152. In summary for the Simonson '614 reference, as in Simonson '152, the chest press exercise movement there can be simultaneous lateral and upward movement, however, as the Simonson '614 reference has weight plates stacked directly upon the movement arm, see FIG. 6, the weight resistance between the lateral and upward movement has a fixed relationship thus there is no teaching of independent, double axes separately selectable resistance as between the lateral and upward movements.
Further, in the multi axes exercise machine prior art looking at U.S. Pat. No. 6,358,189 to Koenig, a weight machine specifically targeting the upper extremities of the body is disclosed having a limited omni-directional allowance of movement of the extension arm. Koenig employs a pivotal yoke mechanism for various movements of the fixed weight load as best shown in FIG. 4 with the weight plate 9 on support rod 54. However, functionally as above in Simonson '614, Simonson '152, and Roger's the weight loads or amount of exercise movement resistance in Koenig is not separated for lateral and upward motion, thus the omni-directional resistance is fixed by weight plate 9 as shown in FIG. 4. Thus, to summarize in Koenig, there is taught motion in multiple directions, but the weight load is fixed for each directions as the resistance loading is based upon only a single set of plate weights as in Simonson '614 and Simonson '152, as Roger's uses a spring resulting in non independent nor variable resistance force in each of the movement axes.
Continuing in a similar manner, further in the prior art for multi-axes exercise machines, another such machine is seen in U.S. Pat. No. 6,482,135 to Ish, III et al, that has a non resistance pivoting weight plate stack that facilitates resistance movement along an arc 116, see FIG. 7 for an example. Thus in Ish, III et al., a weight machine with a moveable load guide is disclosed. The movement of the load guide necessitates that the user of Ish, III et al.'s machine maintain balance of the load which freely pivots laterally, again see FIG. 7, somewhat simulating a free weight situation wherein a user must laterally stabilize the weight, which necessitates additional muscular effort, which would lead to providing an enhanced workout, exercising more of the user's upper body. The load guide in Ish, III et al. includes a rocker which is engagable with either the floor or a support system. As a user in Ish, III et al., exerts a force to the lift member in order to overcome the gravitational pull of the load, the load is at least partially balanced laterally within the load guide by the user, if a support system is used, it could be pivotal in either a single plane of freedom or in two planes of freedom. While in Ish, III et al., the user balancing load system may slightly enhance the effectiveness of a workout, it does not specifically target or specifically teach variable selectable independent resistance in the lateral direction, in combination with selectable independent variable resistance in an upper direction in a single exercise machine.
The prior art in the field of weight machines does recognize the need for multi-axes weight training resistance movement for enhanced muscle training, or in other words for requiring added muscles to be used during a workout session having the attendant benefit of combining multiple exercises into the span of time that normally a single exercise takes, resulting in a more efficient workout. However, there is a lack of recognition for multi axes movement having variable independent selectable resistance in more than one axis simultaneously. Wherein the prior art will facilitate multiple axes exercise movement being only typically with a single resistance mass or cable/flexible strap arrangement, thus even though the prior art exercise machine arm movement is in an angled arc movement, there is still only a single resistance with the single mass or cable/strap force resulting in a limited exercise, i.e. the vertical and horizontal resistance through the arm movement are in a fixed and unchangeable relationship, as is the angular movement of the exercise arm in a totally fixed arrangement. What is needed is a weight machine having the capability to create independent selectable variable resistance for each axis of movement simultaneously, thereby allowing optimization of different resistance loads placed upon different muscles at the same time while the user is completing a single exercise motion, similar to free weights, thus further enhancing exercise efficiency while at the same time maintaining the benefit of an exercise machine, namely safety from the hazards of free weights that are well known.
The present invention exercise apparatus with independently variable multiple axes movement with independent selectable resistance or loading of muscles in at least two simultaneous planes of resistance allows the exercise machine user to maximize the workout of all divisions of a muscle, for example the costal, sternal, and clavicular fibers of the pectoralis major in a single motion, thus increasing workout efficiency resulting in a shorter (time-wise) more effective workout. Furthermore, the present invention exercise apparatus while not having the safety drawbacks of free weights, works towards eliminating the exercise movement limitations of exercise machines by facilitating simultaneous multiple axes exercise resistance movement that is an inherent benefit of free weights, however, with the multi axes weight machine being in a controlled environment to allow one of the benefits of free weights of multiple axes resistance movement with the added enhancement of different resistances available in each axis of exercise movement. Thus, the result here in a sense is in combining the best of free weights and the best of exercise machines minus the downsides of both the free weights for safety issues and also minus the downsides of exercise machines typically being the single limiting axis of exercise movement limitation or singular non independent resistance load for multiple axes exercise movements.